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New dad Depp chooses the offbeat over superstardom

By Luaine Lee
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
November 19, 1999

Actor
Johnny
Depp reports that he's the happiest
he's
ever been.
And it's not because of a gold trophy on his mantle or a monster-hit
action
movie or more coins in the bank. It's because he is a father.

“Life
is really good now,” he says. “It's
the happiest I've ever been in my life, the most content I've ever been
in my
life.”

Depp,
who has never behaved like a movie
star, doesn't dress like one. He's wearing worn Levi's with a thick,
brown
leather belt. A black stocking cap sticks out of his back pocket. On
his right
wrist he sports a wide leather bracelet and his dark hair hangs just
below the
ears, with a half-hearted part weaving its way up the middle.

“As
of May 27, 1999, I learned how to
breathe, learned how to see,” says Depp, leaning forward.
“I know it sounds
really corny, but the kid, Lily-Rose, brought me life. May 27 at 8:25
p.m.”

He
was married briefly early in his career
and has been linked with Winona Ryder, Sherilyn Fenn and model Kate
Moss. But
French singer-actress Vanessa Paradis is the mother of their
6-month-old baby.

Though
his passion is his family, he has
managed a third starring role with quirky director Tim Burton in Sleepy
Hollow.

Depp
and Burton are following their
teamwork in Edward Scissorhands and
Ed Wood with this stylistic
re-creation
of 1799 and the superstition that engulfed the era.

For
the last two years, Depp has been
living in Paris, returning to his home in Los Angeles for, at most, 15
days.
It's much easier for him to stay far from Hollywood, he thinks.

“I'll
give you an example . . . I went to
L.A., spent the night at my house, but before I did that, I went with
Harry
Dean Stanton to a restaurant to have a bite to eat. Within one hour of
being
off a 12-hour flight from Paris, I had a guy approaching me about a
script. I
mean, out of nowhere!

“Five
minutes later, the same thing
happened. It's like a crazy house, really like a mad house, this
obsession and
this ambition and these people who want to talk about movies and make
movies
and acting.”

Depp
never
intended for any of this to happen
when
he followed
his rock band to L.A. 17 years ago. He was a musician who got into
acting for
the money.

A
role in Nightmare on Elm Street
earned some attention. But it was really
the youthful undercover cop on TV's 21
Jump Street that sent hearts into cardiac arrest. Still, Depp
couldn't wait
to get off the force.

Once
freed from the airwaves, Depp's career
took off with offbeat performances in films like Cry-Baby,
Benny & Joon,
Donnie Brasco, Don
Juan DeMarco and What's
Eating Gilbert Grape.

Now
he harbors no illusions about himself.
Casting him as the clumsy and obtuse Ichabod Crane was probably not a
popular
idea, he figures.

“I
have a sinking suspicion that somewhere,
somehow, executives, when a director or producer brings my name up, the
executives go, ‘Oh no, the weird guy.’”

At
any point Depp could have been a
superstar. But he has favored the odd, the skewed, the imperfect.

“I
chose the road myself and put myself on
the road. So if anybody's to blame, it's me, which is fine.”